Cabin fever antidote
J.E. Shields (Fri, 23 Jan 2004 17:53:55 PST)

Where the fun comes in is trying to decide specific instances of species
vs. subspecies, not just lumping vs. splitting but identification per se.

Can we really justify some of the splitting being done for the sake of
protecting small, somewhat unique, populations of broader species? Some of
the science is less than objective in this area. What the heck, most of
taxonomy is subjective! Until the methodology of cladistics was
introduced, there was no quantitative way to handle classification -- until
then it was entirely subjective. A basic tenant of science is that if you
can't put numbers on it, you don't actually know anything about it. They
try to do that with cladistics. Now they can get numbers and now they are
starting to really get a handle on relatedness.

At the species level, I tend to want to split. If it is a distinguishable
population, it should have a unique identifier -- a name. The
classification system should not just show us the relatedness of different
entities and groups, although that is the definition of phylogeny, after
all. I feel it should also give us an idea of the genetic diversity of the
groups.

Jim Shields

*************************************************
Jim Shields USDA Zone 5 Shields Gardens, Ltd.
P.O. Box 92 WWW: http://www.shieldsgardens.com/
Westfield, Indiana 46074, USA
Tel. ++1-317-867-3344 or toll-free 1-866-449-3344 in USA